Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dial structure used in an instrument.
Description of the Related Art
A vehicle such as an automobile is generally provided with an instrument which indicates various kinds of driving information. Japanese Laid-open Patent Application Publication No. 2003-113493 (Reference 1) and No. 2010-271052 (Reference 2) disclose such an instrument having a dial as a display surface whose back ground is a carbon pattern, for example.
In Reference 1, the carbon pattern of the dial is represented by printed color shading. In Reference 2, the carbon pattern is printed on a transparent layer.
However, the dial with the carbon pattern represented by printed color shading in Reference 1 has a lack of stereoscopic effect and high-class appearance. Likewise, in Reference 2, the dial is steric only by the thickness of the transparent layer so that it cannot provide a stereoscopic effect and high-class appearance sufficiently. Moreover, the transparent layer with the carbon pattern is applied on a print layer. Therefore, the carbon pattern cannot be applied on the print layer until the print layer is dried. Thus, there is a problem that it takes a longer time to manufacture the dial.